Swing bowling
technique used for bowling in the sport of cricket
Swing bowling is a bowling technique in cricket, in which the ball is made to curve through the air, in the hope that the change in the ball's flight path will deceive the batter and cause them to play the ball incorrectly. A bowler who uses this technique is called a swing bowler. Swing bowling is generally classed as a type of fast bowling.
A swing bowling delivery is either an inswinger, where the ball curves in towards the batter, or an outswinger, where the ball curves away from the batter. A swing bowler often bowls a mixture of inswingers and outswingers (as well as other non-swinging types of delivery), by changing how they hold the ball. To make the ball swing, a bowling side continually polishes one side of the ball by applying sweat to it, as well as rubbing it against their clothing to shine it, while allowing the opposite side to become gradually more rough through the course of play.
Conventional swing, also called orthodox swing, occurs when the ball is relatively new, before the shiny side becomes worn over the course of play. The airflow over the rough and shiny sides cause it to move in flight towards the rough side and away from the shiny side. Swing bowlers often use a subtly altered grip on the ball to accentuate this effect. Reverse swing is when it swings in the opposite direction - towards the shiny side.
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This entry incorporates text from “Swing bowling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.